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Taco Cowboy writes in with a link about the remnants of some well-aged wine recently uncovered in Israel. "Scientists have uncovered a 3,700-year-old wine cellar in the ruins of a Canaanite palace in Israel, chemical analysis from the samples from the ceramic jars suggest they held a luxurious beverage that was evidently reserved for banquets. The good stuff contains a blend of ingredients that may have included honey, mint, cedar, tree resins and cinnamon bark. The discovery confirms how sophisticated wines were at that time, something suggested only by ancient texts. The wine cellar was found this summer in palace ruins near the modern town of Nahariya in northern Israel. Researchers found 40 ceramic jars, each big enough to hold about 13 gallons, in a single room. There may be more wine stored elsewhere, but the amount found so far wouldn't be enough to supply the local population, which is why the researchers believe it was reserved for palace use. The unmarked jars are all similar as if made by the same potter. Chemical analysis indicates that the jars held red wine and possibly white wine. There was no liquid left; analyses were done on residues removed from the jars. An expert in ancient winemaking said the discovery 'sheds important new light' on the development of winemaking in ancient Canaan, from which it later spread to Egypt and across the Mediterranean."

And when I read it on the Register [theregister.co.uk] I was told that it was "psychotropic."

The wine was flavoured with honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and even mysterious "psychotropic resins", which might explain why people in the biblical era spent so much time spouting prophesies and wearing technicolor dreamcoats.

an interpretation which was omitted from the other news accounts.

Well? will this wine help you see things you wouldn't believe? Or is the Register seeing things that its readers shouldn't believe?

Perhaps, but if you happen to be travelling from The Netherlands to Austria, across Germany on an overnight train, Jägermeister can help to ease the journey with your new neighbors, especially if it helps everyone get some sleep. This is what is what invented for I think.

And I wasn't merely implying fortification. But that Jägermeister is fun to pass around and break the ice with new folks you meet and need to get along with for a short time anyway. I don't know where it comes from, but I was in such a couchette when someone stepped onboard somewhere and brought out a big bottle of Jägermeister and taught me this trick on a long overnight train ride all the way across Germany. It was more fun this way for sure!

Oy vey, this is anti-semitic.Don't you goyim know that the civilization of Judea was far superior to Greece? There's a reason the word "Hell" was chosen to signify the degeneracy and barbarism found in Hellinistic Greece.

The Canaanites weren't Philisitines. The Philistines may very probably have originally been from the Aegean but they settled on the southern coasts of the Levant, in what we may as well call southern Canaan and the south-western part of the Shephelah. As such, since they were there for centuries, we could certainly say the Philistines became Canaanites, but the converse is extremely categorically not true. There were people living in Canaan before the Philistines and any others of the Sea Peoples we may at

If you can track down anything in English (or that translates even semi-coherently with Google Translate) then post them anyway, I'd be very interested to read them. I'd also be very sceptical, but I tend to view that as a positive, so long as "sceptical" doesn't translate to "closed-minded". I certainly interpreted what you wrote through English, and what you basically stated was that in 1700BC, the Canaanites were Philistine, and therefore Greek, which is certainly not true but is also probably not what y

...yes except it is not "us barbarians" that you're trying to denigrate. You're trying to denigrate a much older culture actually. That's the hilarious part about all of this. You're like a dwarf trying to call a midget shorty.

I can't wait until our immigrants wipe all Greeks out. Open the floodgates of immigration into Greece. The more Greeks who starve and suffer, the better. Make sure not to join the Golden Dawn, that's anti-semitic.

Canaanites are known to come from Sumerian-Accadian roots (just as Hebrews, later turned Jews). You can look, as an example, as their cosmology. Summerian goddess Inanna (and the whole pantheon around her, being she not the only but a very important goddess — And yes, I know the word pantheon _is_ Greek) is replicated in Canaan. Some Canaanite tribes were known to also worship trees as gods (and that's why the names for many trees in Hebrew include the particle "El" — Ilan, alon, ela, etc.), and that's why the old testament specifically forbids making altars to (the only, Israelite) God "under big trees and in high places".

As for Philistines, there might be some link to Greeks: After all, the main Philistine god was "the lord of the flies" (Baal Zvuv — One of the names of the devil, "Belcebu" stems from it). From the composed name, "Baal" means basically "the lord, and Zvuv has an ethimological closeness to "Zeus". The theology is, however, quite different.

I am unsure on the precise meaning of your question. However, many independent cultures shared this image — Just as the Greeks had the underworld ruled by Hades (Zeus' older brother) and under the custody of Kerberos, the Summerians had Ereshkigal (Inanna's older sister)... But the Egyptians had the underworld ruled by Osiris (son of Geb and Nut, gods of the Earth and Sky respectively). OK, but we are still talking about the East Mediterranean and Crescent region — Aztecs had the Mictlán (t

Grapes were first domesticated and wine first produced in the Near East (modern day Syria, Israel, Turkey, Iran etc) and the Caucasus. Just as the article said, it later spread to Egypt and across the Mediterranean into Greece.

Though 3700 years ago (aka 1700 BCE) isn't very far back in terms of these ancient civilizations (just in terms of Greek Civilization, maybe). The Near East had been making wine for thousands of years before that.

The evidence goes a whole lot further back than a few thousand years ago -- just from a glance at Wikipedia's limited information, the earliest shards of pottery stained with wine were (using modern names, as my ancient geography sucks) in Georgia in 6000 BC, then Iran by 5000 BC, and Grecian Macedonia by 4500 BC. (Iran's evidence comes along with the earliest signs of painting the inside of the vessel with turpentine to introduce a common modern flavor, and Grecian Macedonia's case also involves the oldes

Do you add 'honey, mint, cedar, tree resins and cinnamon bark' to your wine because your technique is "sophisticated" or because you are trying to restore some semblance of drinkability to the result of a really dreadful fermentation process?

That sounds like it would be good for bolstering legionary morale: if the alternative is drinking it, fighting to the death against whatever enemies are available starts to sound substantially more attractive...

True, though (while truly ghastly results have been substantially reduced by sanitary handling equipment and standardized yeast strains) those are exactly the sort of things frequently made from deeply undistinguished jug or box wines.

On the plus side, they don't seem to have invented wine coolers or 'flavored fortified wines' so they can count themselves blessed on those counts.

True, though (while truly ghastly results have been substantially reduced by sanitary handling equipment and standardized yeast strains) those are exactly the sort of things frequently made from deeply undistinguished jug or box wines.

On the plus side, they don't seem to have invented wine coolers or 'flavored fortified wines' so they can count themselves blessed on those counts.

Sorry I forgot most of the audience here was American.

Come to Europe. Over here wine doesn't come in boxes. And Glühwein (the word for mulled wine) is made with high quality wine, and sometimes a touch of Amaretto. In fact you would be hard pressed to find a ghastly wine. In the grocery store a 5 EUR bottle of wine will compare with $20-$30 over there.

Jesus Christ. OK, look, I've lived years in Germany, I've spent the last week drinking a lot of Gluehwein, but saying that "Gluehwein" is "the word for mulled wine" just makes you look like a cretin. Is "Gluehwein" what we call mulled wine in Britain? No. Is Britain part of Europe? Yes. We call it, err, mulled wine. It even tastes slightly different from Gluehwein, and I say that as a man who has lived many years in Britain and many years in Germany. So let's go north, to Scandinavia. Do they drink Gluehwein in Scandinavia? OH FUCK NO THEY DON'T DRINK ANY GLUEHWEIN. They drink gløgg in Norway, which last time I looked was in Europe, gløgg in Denmark which last time I looked was in Europe *and* the EU (holy shit!), and glögg in Sweden which, oh my God, is in Europe and the EU.

OK, so let's go away from Scandinavia and into France. Surely they must drink Gluehwein, right? Right? Surely! I mean, France is central to the EU, right? Right? Oh, fuck. Gluehwein is a German word. The French don't drink Gluehwein. They drink vin chaud. Shit.

OK, Spain! Come on, Spain! You can prove KingOfBLASH right and not a cretin! What do you drink, Spain? Gluehwein! Gluehwein! Gluehwein! Oh. No. You drink vino caliente. Cunts.

Italy. You're one of our last hopes. We've lost Britain, we've lost Scandinavia and we've lost France. Come on, Italy! You drink... oh god you drink vin brulé. How could you?

I knwo for a fact I'll be modded to oblivion for mocking you on this point, but honestly, try and say something serious rather than talking out of your arse. Gluehwein is very clearly not "the word" for "mulled wine" in Europe. Fuck's sake, Ireland both speaks English and uses the euro, and they call it fucking "mulled wine".

I'm a cretin? Is that an attack ad hominem? Where does all of this anger come from?

You would be correct that grammatically I should have said "a word for mulled wine" instead of "the word for mulled wine." But that doesn't really warrant such an insane reaction.

Some of the countries you forgot to mention like Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland (and probably a few others) use the term Glühwein to describe some sort of warm wine drink flavored with different ingredients.

French are used to have a strong state that has some economical involvment. They often go on strike to call for state action, which would here be protectionism and/or subventions. Of course within today's EU, state cannot do much, and this is a reason why people are increasingly rejecting EU.

EU agricultural policy strongly reflects French agricultural interests. The tricky bit has been trying to figure out what sort of special-pleading magic can be employed to continue policy designed to subsidize French farmers without getting stuck applying it to the (much poorer; but of less interest to France) farmers in some of the new EU members to the east...

Fortunately, France agriculture is not only focused on mediocre products that could not be sold without EU subsides. There are also quality products that will find buyers even without EU help.

IMO the problem is not that EU agricultural policy helps France too much, the problem is that it helps mediocre products that are exported and unfairly compete with third world products, pushing the farmers out of business.

French producers of 'vin ordinair' were threatening to go on strike because American/Australian box wine is putting them out of business.

Wines from California are also winning awards competing against French wines. And now wine country is moving North; as aquifers are tapped out here in California, and as global warming enables production to move to formerly-colder climes, it's heading towards Oregon.

I don't now anything about Scandinavian taxes but over here in the Netherlands the excise tax is based on the amount of alcohol, not the untaxed price of the beverage. This makes cheap booze relatively more expensive. It's about 45 cents for a liter of wine.For a 5 euro bottle of wine the tax would be 10% of the total, while the price of 50 euro bottle only includes 1% of tax.

(Note that there are other taxes involved besides the excise and one has to pay tax on the alcohol-tax).

you forgot after you finish the boxed wine (commonly called goon in australia) you can blow up the bladder to use a pillow and have a nap.
or play wheel of goon arrange people around a rotary clothes line, attach 1 goon bag (boxed wine) and spin. who ever ends up with the bag of goon above them has to drink. add more bags as desired.

While it may be possible to find, I've never seen it. I've lived in Netherlands and Switzerland, and I've visited most of western europe. I've been to scandinavia, but usually I don't drink if I go visit since alcohol prices are insane.

Wine in Europe does indeed come in boxes. You can find many French wine producers selling their wine in boxes. The difference between the boxed French wine and boxed American wine is that the boxed American wine tends to be crap, whereas in France you can find some excellent wines in boxes. In some cases its better to go with the box, since the wine tends to last longer once opened due to the lack of aeration of the wine.

Do you add 'honey, mint, cedar, tree resins and cinnamon bark' to your wine because your technique is "sophisticated" or because you are trying to restore some semblance of drinkability to the result of a really dreadful fermentation process?

There are over sixty additives commonly added to wines at various stages of the fermentation process today, none of which are required to be denoted on the label in any way. Now, in light of some knowledge, ask that question again.

As an aside, wine also requires fungus only spread by wasps to reach its full potential. It's complex stuff.

I'm going with sophisticated, because the fermentation process is too easy to get wrong.Adding honey is called back-sweetening, and the vast majority of us brewers do it - mainly with artificial sweeteners these days. After a week, all the sugar has been converted to alcohol and the drink tastes very dry without some sort of sweetening.

I'm currently brewing an orange and white grape mix (1 part pure orange, 1 part white grape, 1 part water). Apart from removing the pectin with an enzyme, the process I use i

No probably just some nasty brownish sludge. All of the volatiles including the alcohol will be gone. The rest of the what was once there will probably be heavily oxidized and taste pretty nasty too. Its not instant coffee ( which is generally pretty bad itself).

The good stuff contains a blend of ingredients that may have included honey, mint, cedar, tree resins and cinnamon bark.

Often when I hear about ancient alcoholic beverages, all sorts of fun flavors like honey, mint, juniper and whatnot, have been brewed into the mix. Why is this not done to a larger extent today? Most of the booze you can get today is quite au naturel.

As another poster has pointed out, one of the reasons they added all this gunk was that the wine itself was often crap. People who really enjoy wine today generally want to just taste the wine--provided it's a *good* wine, of course.

Who told you that? There's tons of alcohols with all kinds of adulterants. Besides the 60 or so assorted additives used in winemaking, people put pretty much any spices you might imagine into craft beers, and there's all kinds of herbal and herbal-infused alcohols. Jaegermeister is the best-known, but a pretty fair cocktail of herbs is used to make Bombay Sapphire Gin, and an even broader palette is used to create Hendrick's.

When Chris Columbus brought back samples of 'wild grapes' from the Americas, he apparently also brought back a parasite that attacked the roots of European grape vines. (Sorry, no citation as I read this in a book so many years ago it isn't funny. Hopefully it wasn't an old wives tale, else my question will become invalidated - I did google for it, but couldn't find a reference). Apparently, the parasite was so bad that the only way to save the European grape vines was to graft the American roots onto Eu

But it's the American roots with the European wine varieties. They're still grafted and both varieties are still around. The grapes would have mostly the flavor of the grafted European grape and not the American root.

I was sort of wondering if they used any old DNA to recreate the old root system of the European wine. They would need an environment without the aphids (sterile environment). Someone could then produce it. Like you said, the European vines are still being grafted onto the American root systems, so maybe this discovery is irrelevant as the DNA is already there. Which now makes me wonder if they can use the European vines to grow an old root system in a sterile environm